Specification, Prototypes, Evolutionary Design

I think this one  by Seth is not quite correct.

One, the Taj Mahal is not a "big white marble house". It is not a house. It is a mausoleum.

Two, there were plenty of past works on which the development could have been based. His great-grand father, Humayun's tomb, in Delhi, could easily have served as a prototype - except for being in red sandstone. But then when Humayun died, the Mughal empire was not what it was in Shah Jehan's time!

The Taj Mahal is built on proven architectural principles. It is a design that has evolved.

The best specs are prototypes. And Shah Jehan would have seen plenty of those, as would have his architects.

Message: build your software on sound proven design principles. Successful designs - whether biological, architectural, or software - are evolutionary.

Message of Bihar's Mid-Day Meal Tragedy

It turns out that the CAG had, a few years ago, pointed out the unhygienic conditions prevailing, and state of the materials used, in the mid-day meal system. Arnab Goswami, on his show asked one of the participants as to why quality control measures were not in place. The participant said it was not practical  to do so.

QA being "not practical" is something that I have heard a lot of when it comes to software work. (A few weeks back, I was part of a 3-way discussion on quality, when again I heard more about "not practical".)

Do developers and their managers treat QA reports any more seriously than the politicians treat the CAG's report? How seriously are QA audits taken in most software companies? (Incidentally, final testing and defect reporting do not constitute the totality of QA.) As the tag line for this blog says, "Quality & 6-pack abs, both require hard work". And sacrifice. And the integrity not to fudge - if you did 20 crunches, do not imagine you did 21.

Could the contractor have said, "Sorry, I cannot provide the meal"?

Can you as a software professional say, "Sorry, I cannot meet the time frame with the required quality"?

Must you also serve software crawling with "bugs" like the food served to those hapless children?

If you are being forced by management, what of the school principal, the contractor, ...?

ZAMM-1

I mentioned in my previous post, I am going to make a series of posts about "Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (ZAMM).

Before I post about specific passages that resonated with me, I want to first talk about my relationship with the book.

I first read the book about 20 odd years ago. After that I have re-read it a couple of times. Never the same copy. I confess to being guilty of having given it to (forced it on?) people I have known, to read. I really missed the last one that went missing. It had lots of notes, and highlighting, and a personal index. Then on 22nd Dec last year (I remember the date as I was at the airport to receive my son and his family), I came across the 25th anniversary edition. I promptly purchased it from the Kindle store. I am happy that I did.

The first time I bought the book was because I was fascinated by the title. I was quite adept at stripping down my Lambretta scooter and putting it together again. Never at the level where I did my own welding or machining, like the author; I wished I had the gumption to do it. (The book has a lot to say about gumption. I relate to it totally.)

I was also mildly interested in Zen

Here are a couple of things that I believe about the book:
1. It is one of two books, without reading which, the education of an electronics - or software - engineer is not complete. The other book is, Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine". (I still have my copy:-)
2. The book was first published in 1974. That was just after the Oil-Shock of 1973. Fuel efficient Japanese cars started making inroads into the American market. The consumer electronics industry was finished off. Americans could not believe that the Japanese could produce high quality goods at the prices they did. Japanese industry was studied. Japanese methods like Quality Circles were adopted. Nothing worked. Till finally it was established that Japanese practices required Japanese civilizational values. (See the books about Toyota authored by Jeffrey Liker). I find it prescient of the author that in ZAMM, he ascribes the problems of American society in general, and American industry in particular, to civilizational values. And since Western, and hence American, civilizational values derive from ancient Greece, he traces the problem to Aristotle. Very interesting.

Pin Factory Revisted

A while back I had posted about software work and the pin factory. As that post makes out, I am no admirer of specialization.
  
Yesterday I finished reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". The sub-title of the book is An Inquiry into Values (Note: Italics and underline are mine). The edition is the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition.

Quote from the book:

"Arete implies a respect for the wholeness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialization. It implies a contempt for efficiency - or rather a much higher idea of efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself."

In an earlier paragraph the author, quoting Kitto, an authority on ancient Greece, says  arete to the ancient Greeks simply meant excellence.

PS: Prof. Prisig could just as well be talking of software instead of Motorcycles. I hope to post more on the subject - and the book.